Shorter games are the cause of frequent trade-ins, says Just Cause developer

There’s been a lot of talk and controversy over used games recently. They’ve been a huge factor in the gaming industry, and frugal gamers rely on used games in order to fulfill their entertainment needs. However, many people have come forward and said that if games were actually good, there would be less of them traded in. The newest person to join in on this conversation is the founder of the developing studio behind the Just Cause series.

Avalanche Studios’ Christofer Sundberg says that “games have been too short,” which is why gamers are selling them after they play them because they don’t offer enough lasting appeal. He notes that when gamers can get through a game in “8 to 10 hours,” it’s no reason that they return them or sell them off, “because there’s no reason for players to play it again.” This goes right along with Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime’s comments from the other day.

Of course, Sundberg had to plug Just Cause in his argument, saying that the series still attracts “hundreds of thousands” of players every day because the games offers variety and hours and hours of gameplay. Sandbox and open-world games in general are good examples, where there are almost unlimited possibilites on what you can do in these types of games.

Sundberg says that “if you’re offering little variation, then there’s no motivation for the player to keep that game,” and he claims that when he visits game stores “each week,” he finds that there are not that many copies of Just Cause sitting in the used game section, using that as proof that gamers keep the games they truly love.

Of course, there’s another side to this argument. Personally, I’ve played Portal over and over again and can easily get through the entire game in under an hour. There are certainly games that are an exception to Sundberg’s argument, but it does have some merit: If games have a weak lasting appeal, they’re more likely to get traded-in.